OFAC ratchets up Russian sanctions

   The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has stepped up efforts to crack down on those Russian individuals and companies that played a role in the recent attacks against the Ukraine’s navy in the Kerch Strait.
   Specifically, OFAC added four Russian individuals and eight companies to its Specially Designated Nationals List. These designations block all property and interests in property of those individuals and entities, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from transacting with them. Any entities owned 50 percent or more by these designated persons also are blocked.
   The blocked Russian individuals are Gennadiy Medvedev, deputy director of the Border Guard Service of Russia’s Federal Security Service; Sergey Stankevich, head of the Border Directorate of Russia’s Federal Security Service; Andrey Shein, the deputy head of the Border Directorate and head of the Coast Guard unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service; and Ruslan Romashkin, head of the Service Command Point of the Federal Security Service in Crimea and Sevastopol.
   The six Russian companies placed on the SDN List are Yaroslavsky Shipbuilding Plant, Zelenodolsk Shipyard Plant, AO Kontsern Okeanpribor, PAO Zvezda, AO Zavod Fiolent and GUP RK KTB Sudokompozit.
   OFAC said the designation of the Russian individuals and companies are in line with other sanctions taken by the European Union and Canada.
    “The United States and our transatlantic partners will not allow Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine to go unchecked,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin (pictured above) said in a statement. “This joint initiative with our partners in the European Union and Canada reinforces our shared commitment to impose targeted and meaningful sanctions in response to the Kremlin’s attempts to disregard international norms and undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”